Claiming my miracle

My granddaughter was diagnosed around 6 months of age as having optic nerve hypoplasia.

While the condition can come with many symptoms and problems, the most obvious was the inability for her to control the movement of her one eye.

To look at her, it always appeared that her right eye was looking to her far right.

The condition was even more prominent when she became tired almost concealing her iris and pupil in its entirety.

Surgery could very easily correct the placement of the eye which would spare her from the vicious taunting of other children when she enters elementary school, but she would have to wait until she was a little older to do so.

Another concern with optic hypoplasia is that children can often have serious difficulty with their vision.

Very early on, the doctors informed my daughter that they were not very confident that the eye was functioning properly and that they wouldn't know for sure how well she would be able to see after surgery or if she would even be able to do so at all.

We often did various "tests" when we would visit with her to try to determine if she had any sight whatsoever.

My heart always dropped when there was no response.

As recently as a month ago, I held out my finger and moved it toward her good eye to gauge her response.

She made a silly face and closed her eyes to avoid being poked.

About a minute later, we then covered the good eye as I moved my finger toward the other.

There was no silly face, no eye closing, not even a blink to reassure us that she could see my finger.

If I had moved it any closer, I could have easily touched the eyeball itself.

At that point I stepped out of denial and came to terms with the fact that my precious grandbaby was blind in one eye. I cried and continued to pray for healing and sight.

Earlier this week, my daughter informed me that they had an appointment with Wills Eye to assess her for the surgery to correct the positioning of the eye.

She asked for me to pray that they would be able to schedule the surgery before they were due to lose their present insurance.

Otherwise, the procedure would not be covered at all.

I immediately took to Facebook to ask the wonderful gals in my church women's group to not only pray that the surgery would be scheduled while they still had insurance, but also that sight would be granted to her in that bad eye.

I also stated to them that even if she never sees out of that eye, I know that she is blessed in so many other ways and that no matter what, she will be fine.

Her partial blindness was a hard thing to surrender to; but even so, I had come to peace with it.

A few hours later, I received a text that her surgery would take place in two weeks.

Woo hoo! Answered prayer.

I immediately reported the good news back to my dear friends.

Shortly thereafter, my daughter called me to fill me in on all of the details.

She talked about how happy she was to be able to go through with the surgery, but that she wasn't really thrilled about the $1,000 deductible.

I assured her that the whole money situation would work itself out and that she could just make payments.

Searching for some last glimmer of hope, I asked her if the doctor thought there would be any chance of my sweet baby ever being able to see out of that eye following surgery.

"Oh, I guess I didn't tell you," she replied.

She explained that the doctor had placed some sort of patch on her good eye that suctioned itself to her face in order to completely prohibit her from seeing out of it.

The doctor then held out a marble in front of the other eye ... at which point my granddaughter immediately reached out, grabbed the marble and then tried to put it in her mouth!

She could see!

I sobbed and sobbed with joy for quite some time.

I have no other explanation for it other than answered prayer and I thanked God over and over.

I was so emotional following our conversation that I felt that I needed to put on some happy music so that I could stop crying.

I selected a Christian music station on Pandora and was immediately blown away with the first song that came on.

It was one that I had never heard before and the title of it sent me reeling.